


pinwheel

by demjinyves



Category: GOT7
Genre: Angst, F/M, Long-Distance Relationship, POV First Person, actor jinyoung, always angst, because fuck y/n, lil bit of romance, ruining the flow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-21
Packaged: 2020-07-10 10:03:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,677
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19903930
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/demjinyves/pseuds/demjinyves
Summary: “Hey, I know you must be asleep right now. I just wanted to leave you a message saying that I hope you’re well. I hope you’re getting enough sleep. I know you’ve got a lot going on right now, but I want to make sure you’re okay. You’re okay? Are you taking care of yourself? Give me a call when you can. I miss you. I know I already said that. I’m sorry. I just miss you so much. I’m sorry. I can’t think of anything else to say, just I’m sorry and I… I still… I-I still lo—”End of message. To delete this message, press seven. To replay this message, press—





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is another request + repost from tumblr and I wrote it while I was sad in school

_“Hey, I know you must be asleep right now. I just wanted to leave you a message saying that I hope you’re well. I hope you’re getting enough sleep. I know you’ve got a lot going on right now, but I want to make sure you’re okay. You’re okay? Are you taking care of yourself? Give me a call when you can. I miss you. I know I already said that. I’m sorry. I just miss you so much. I’m sorry. I can’t think of anything else to say, just I’m sorry and I… I still… I-I still lo—”_

_End of message. To delete this message, press seven. To replay this message, press—_

🌙

I didn’t know what we were getting into.

At first, it seemed like the best thing to do, the right thing to do. Because if we loved each other, it would work. If we loved each other, we could be together.

Despite the odds, we would find a way to be close and stay close. Nothing would change. Nothing would keep us apart.

“No matter what,” we promised each other.

No matter the distance.

“Hey. Hey. Hey, are you sleepy?”

Quickly saving my essay, I closed the screen to meet Jinyoung’s face, smiling at his all too hopeful, but incessantly concerned face. He couldn’t help it, torn between needing to sleep and wanting to stay up.

“Not as sleepy as you,” I pointed out, finger twirling around the wire of my headphones. “Go,” I insist before he can protest. “You just got settled, you’re probably exhausted.”

He frowns, mouth shrinking as he purses his lips together. “I just said goodbye to you. Don’t you miss me?”

“We said goodbye 28 hours ago.”

“Wow, you’re counting too?” He brightens up a little at the thought. “Do you miss me already?”

I rest my cheek in one hand, shaking my head. “Not as much as you miss me.”

“So you should let me stay up with you, isn’t that the logical thing to do?”

“Jinyoung,” I scoff playfully, “When has an actor ever been logical? Remember? They’re not. Now go to sleep, I’m busy.”

Through the screen, I could still read him so well. He’s pouting, dejected and trying to be cute so he could have his way. But I knew him better than that.

Tomorrow was his first private reading meeting with a director and team of writers and producers in the afternoon. Jinyoung would need the rest because he needed to prepare. Mornings of auditions and readings would consist of a balanced, but hearty breakfast. Then, he would go for a walk to clear his mind and read over the material. He’d start practicing and experimenting with different inflections, body language, and eye contact.

“Tomorrow then?” His voice is hopeful, but I resist temptation.

“ _After_ the reading.”

“Why are you so selfless?” Jinyoung asks only half-mad, “Be more selfish, I miss you like crazy.”

“And what kind of girlfriend would I be if I did that?” I smile in spite of myself, knowing he needed my support and the push. It reminded him what’s important and what’s important to Jinyoung means the world to me.

“You’re _my_ girlfriend.” His face softens then and I put on my brave face for him. Of course, I missed him already. “Thank you. I can’t do this without you. You better finish your paper. I don’t want you distracted when we talk tomorrow.”

🌙

I think I’ll miss Jinyoung forever.

At first, it didn’t feel so different. He was always a Skype call or a text away. The difference in time zones wasn’t so big at first. Neither of us could help staying up, waiting for the other person.

We would find ways to “stay” together. Watching movies on separate screens, but watching them at the same time while trying to watch each other. Eating in bed or taking our computers to cafes and more often than not, diners to share an unconventional coffee. We wouldn’t always do what we hoped to plan, but we made the most of it.

I miss his hands the most. I miss the gentleness in them. How he used to hold mine, his thumb stroking the top. His fingers always hesitating before reaching for mine. He was always unsure at first, but as well as I knew him, he had come to know me. Even when he hesitated, he had to know how much I wanted him.

If I’m being honest, sometimes I even missed that. At least if he was uncertain, he was there. He was with me.

We never thought it would be this hard. We never thought the distance could separate us. But then, it never once crossed our minds that two people could be so lonely when all they wanted was to be together.

Somewhere down the line, we just became lonely together.

🌙

“Are you mad at me?”

“No,” I answer, eyes glued to the article on the screen. The photos. The comments.

“Then why can’t you even look at me?”

Because if I did, I would be mad at him.

‘ _Up-and-coming actor Park Jinyoung spotted with fellow rising star leaving_ The Nice Guy _in downtown LA. Sources say the two were sitting close, talking silently to each other as they dined with fellow co-stars._  
“They were very intimate. He would lean over to whisper in her ear and she would make him laugh through the ni—”  


“That’s not me. You know that.” His voice leaves me so numb. Like an ice bath. Where I wanted to feel it, stinging even, I felt nothing. Maybe a pathetic jab in the pit of my stomach, but it made me sick with sadness instead of hot with rage.

“Y/N.” He’s trying not to beg. Jinyoung doesn’t beg, he doesn’t need to. He had an answer for everything. “You know it isn’t true—”

I cut him off coldly. “What isn’t true?”

I can tell he’s surprised. I never snapped at him. We had never gotten mad at each other like this, with nothing said except the bare minimum. We’ve never had nothing else to talk about. Even when he had been away for almost a year, we never hung up on each other angry. Jinyoung never let me go to bed not knowing where he was going, not without saying goodnight, never forgetting to promise, promise, promise,

_“No matter the distance.”_

“I know I did nothing wrong.” The emptiness in his voice harrows me. I feel myself instantly regret snapping at him where he used to comfort me. Take my hand with that tell-tale twitch in his fingers, that assured hesitation that reminded me how careful he always was.

“And I know you believe me,” he murmurs, “But I know you resent me. This isn’t about me being seen with my co-star. Is it?”

It’s about not having time. It’s about never having enough time anymore no matter how much we try to make time. One of us was always either asleep or busy, always encouraging each other to go spend free time with someone else, always, “Go, we always talk,” when we can never talk.

This is about filming being too stressful, too tiring, and rest being too important. It’s about having too many assignments and needing to concentrate, finding time to study when I already gave all my time to him. It’s a lot of poorly veiled sadness behind proud smiles and, “I understand’s”, and empty silence where comfortable understanding once was.

But if we love each other, we will find a way. If we love each other enough, we can make it work. What’s important to Jinyoung is important to me.

If that’s true, then what’s important to him?

As the question hangs between us, he decides to answer it.

“What about your dream? I know I’m busy, but what about you? You have your future to focus on, you can’t blame me—”

And I don’t. I never do, not out loud. But it was obvious, his demanding, rising career was getting between us. A press conference tour here, new opportunities there, the traveling from set to set across the world, but never being able to come home.

Yes, I feel so selfish for asking when he can see me, when I could possibly plan around to fly to him. Don’t I deserve that? Didn’t he want that too?

It hurts.

It hurts so much, more than being cold to each other, lying to each other, pretending to be okay, _waiting_ , _waiting, waiting_ for each other to just find the fucking time. It hurt so much because in the back of my mind, I know I should let him go.

Because Jinyoung was too good to say the words himself.

How can he be the one to do it? How can he bring himself to say, “ _I’m sorry, but—”_

So we sit and stare at whatever web page left open or whatever background music we put on to distract us from each other, afraid to even bring up what we had been thinking with each passing day that we don’t talk. Yet when we do, we say, “I love you.” And we talk about our day, then our week, and now the last few weeks.

We sit there in front of our screens not knowing when one day, we will just give up. There’s nothing worse than the time spent waiting.

Waiting all day, night, week, month just to wait again for either of us to just pluck up the courage to say, “ _I can’t do this anymore._ ”

“Jinyoung.”

That night, it had to be me. It was always going to be me.

“Jinyoung. You were my new dream.” And I hung up before he could say more because I didn’t want him to. Not because I didn’t want to hear what he had to say, but because if I loved him, I wouldn’t force him to. I wouldn’t leave him in the aftermath of the pain I felt burying itself in my chest.

Like a tight rubber band tied together, pulling and pulling and pulling between us until Jinyoung or myself found the courage to snip at the knot. To cut it away before it tore apart.

I did the right thing. Surely he knew that. If you love someone, you take a few steps backward, maybe even more. To give way to the happiness of the person you love.

That night, I kept thinking with my blankets over my head and my eyes shut tight trying to stop the tears, _And if I love Jinyoung, I’m happy to give way to his happiness._

To his dream. Even when it became too much for me to share it.

But maybe it was never mine to share, to begin with.

🌙

_You have one new message._

_“Hey, are you sleeping? Wah, what time is it there now? Let’s see.. 4:26 AM? You have a long day ahead then. I just wanted to say I landed, I’m waiting for a car now. The lights are so bright here, it’s so different. But it’s still pretty dark. Wanna know why? Because they still can’t compare to yours… ahhhh, that was so bad. Please don’t break up with me. I hope you get this. Listen to it as soon as you wake up, okay? I miss you like crazy. And I have so much more to say. I miss you. And I love you. No matter the dist—”  
_

_To replay this message, press one. To delete, press seven. To save this message, press—_

_Message marked for deletion. Main menu._


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the requestor wanted part 2 and honestly, so did I

> “Jinyoung, you have truly taken this industry by storm. Seemingly out of nowhere, you’ve landed roles that many young actors have trained their whole lives for, especially as an international actor. Who would you say you owe your success to if anyone at all?”  
>  “Well, acting has always been my dream, from when I was young even.” He pauses. For a while, Park does not say much. It is a gentle reminder to the editor that he is as private as his agent claims him to be. Finally, he looks up. “You have to be a very selfish person to be successful. I wouldn’t say my success is owed to anyone. But built on someone else’s sacrifice.”

🌙

The world is quiet as I walk home from campus. I remember how much that would bother me, coming home so late to find that nothing could distract me except the reminder of waiting for Jinyoung.

Like a mantra, I would repeat to myself, “It’s okay if he doesn’t answer.” It’ll be alright to just leave him a gentle reminder. He would want to hear from me and know that I’m okay. And that it’s okay to not feel okay. Even if all you want to do is hear his voice. That’s okay too. Grin and bear it for him.

Breaking up isn’t the hardest part. That’s actually the easiest.

_“Jinyoung, you were my new dream.”_

The hardest part is living with it. Not having to live without Jinyoung. I’ve always been able to do that, albeit badly when we were together. Even when we aren’t, I can handle living without him.

I packed all the things he left at my place in a box and shipped it to his apartment in LA. Whatever was left of him that belonged to me went in another that I left under the bed. I didn’t want to get rid of it, knowing that it was okay to miss him when all I wanted to do was forget missing him.

It didn’t help that I was seeing him everywhere. On billboards, buildings, in magazines. I haven’t gone to a movie theater that didn’t show films he was in. I manage, by the end of the first month, not to pick up a tabloid with his face intimately next to another woman’s.

“I’m only human,” I tell myself. And in every way, I wished I wasn’t.

Because I have to live with is knowing that we weren’t strong enough to last. But in my heart, and maybe his too, I wished we had been. That’s the hardest part.

Knowing that all we ever did was love each other. And it just wasn’t enough. The thought alone was enough to make me miss him all over again.

But I don’t return his calls. I don’t answer his messages. After a while, he does give up. Even Jinyoung, who could never leave a line unsaid, always needed to have the last word, to say goodnight or good morning before I hung up; even he has to give up.

It is cruel of me to force him to. I know that better than anyone how cruel it is, how much it hurts. I can live with that. Love isn’t about how much or how little of it there is, I’ve realized. It’s about how much you’re willing to give up.

Even if Jinyoung’s dream was never mine to share.

We move on. Wake up, breath, and try to catch up with the world because it doesn’t stop for us. And keep trying to be okay until we’re okay again.

🌙

So what the hell was Jinyoung doing in my apartment?

I was frozen in my tracks, not missing the fact that he was sitting by my window and dropping my stuff with a soft clatter where I meant to set it down on the table. I hated that he could do that. Make me tense and nervous like this when he could just sit there with that far off stare.

How like an actor to appear so precisely indifferent.

“I—”

“Want you out,” I cut him off as he gets up.

He winces and I’m surprised at my own hostility. But then I remember that I’m not myself, which makes me even angrier. Before the period of waiting around and being lonely with each other, there was never a time when I wasn’t myself around Jinyoung.

I hate it. I hate the way my lip quivers when I’m trying not to cry. I hate the way he’s looking at me, so guilty and tired, and it takes everything I have to hold his stare.

“I just want to talk,” Jinyoung says softly.

“So talk.”

I don’t allow my voice to betray how I feel. I want him to leave after he gets his closure because he’s just that selfish. Or I’m just that selfless to him still. Because after this, he can go back to his life of success and happiness without guilt.

“Did you read my interview with GQ?”

All I can do is scoff. And I laugh, mirthless and empty because even after all this time, it is still about him.

“Get out.”

“No, wait—” He takes a step closer and I turn my head away, not wanting to look at him anymore. I can’t tell if seeing his face would make me punch it or somehow miss it, just because it’s been so long.

It occurs to me that it has been almost two years since I said goodbye to Jinyoung at the airport and this was the first time I’ve seen him. I stare down at his shiny patent shoes and impeccably pressed slacks with contempt.

Here he was, actor Park, thriving in his success, no doubt his women because he’d have them, and wealth. I finally taste a bitterness that was never there before as he stares back at me. Me, in my old sweatshirt and too-worn jeans. Nothing like the actresses and models he’s been seen with. So far from the world he built his new home in.

“Then I’ll go,” I bite out and turn around, but he takes my arm.

My breath hitches in my throat as my other hand meets his cheek before I can stop myself.

We are standing again in silence, me staring at his face, he at me with my arm still in hand and his other tenderly touching where I’d slapped him.

Somehow, we are waiting again. It’s such a painfully nostalgic feeling, but all I can do is stare. I don’t think either of us ever thought I was capable of hurting him.

“I…” Jinyoung begins again, “I wanted to see you.”

“It’s been a year.” I try to swallow the lump in my throat. “You don’t get to decide when you want to see me.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Hot tears burn in my eyes now as his apology comes out, lamely, in his soft voice. So gentle and guilty, it makes me even angrier because it’s not the apology I want to hear.

But I can’t yell or scream at him. It hurts too much. My throat and chest feel so tight, I covered my mouth even when it started getting hard to breathe. He didn’t get to hear me cry for him. Jinyoung doesn’t deserve my voice.

“I couldn’t be strong enough for you. I’m sorry for that too.” I shake my head as he pulls me to him. His hands are so warm as they fall on my shoulders and I hate myself for wanting them.

“It was always about my dream. And my wish. But all this time, you—” His voice wavers. He’s trying not to let his voice crack, the way it did when he read through a particularly emotional line. Jinyoung always became so invested in his characters.

I couldn’t tell what broke my heart; that he was trying not to cry or even when he was saying the words I longed for, I could only hear his heart aching.

“I miss you.”

One of his hands reaches for my cheek, hesitating when I flinch. I try to duck and move away, but he leans down so close to me, I’m frozen again.

And I’m so angry still, but so terrified as I see him through blurry eyes. He buries his other hand in my hair behind my neck, tilting my head up to look at him. So afraid that he’ll finally see how much I still want him.

Could he hear my heart ramming in my rib cage? Feel the shudder that passed through me as his warm breath falls against my mouth? 

“I miss you,” he murmurs, a tear rolling down his cheek. “Y/N, I miss you.”

It’s been so long. It’s achingly slow and fleetingly quick as my eyes shut and Jinyoung kisses me, so gently warm, my hands ball his shirt in fists.

In an instant, my back meets the wall and he deepens those soft kisses into burning, languid searches. I nip and suck at his lips, his tongue teasing between mine as he presses himself into me until there is nothing left between us. His hands slip underneath my shirt, my own clumsy, trembling fingers fumbling with the buttons of his.

He pressed kisses to my temples, my forehead, the bridge of my nose, before ducking down to lave and suck at my jaw and neck, sighing against the skin when mine found the shell of his ear.

“I miss you,” he murmurs against my neck. “I miss you.”

“Please,” I whisper into his ear, “Please don’t leave me behind.”

🌙

> “You have to be a very selfish person to be successful. I wouldn’t say my success is owed to anyone. But built on someone else’s sacrifice.” He stops again, this time, he smiles and waves.  
>  Behind us on set and joining us that day, was the actor’s longtime girlfriend. As Jinyoung mouths, ‘I love you’, he focuses again on the interview.  
>  “I’m very fortunate to have her. She once told me, that I was her new dream. And for a long time, I think it scared me. So much that I lose sight of it. Being a great actor has always been my goal. But you know, it’s because of her, that selfless person, that I was able to achieve that. And I’m not so afraid to admit that she had become my dream too.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> follow me on [twitter](https://twitter.com/feraljackson) or [tumblr](https://yves-saintlaurwang.tumblr.com/) if you want, it's free!


End file.
